Hypercharge: Unboxed Review (Jonbon)
A beautifully made game that seems to have an identity crisis.
The game has a great theme and great ideas behind it on paper.
In gameplay though I just can't say I enjoy it.
I got the game expecting lots of FPS action and tower building strategy.
What I got was about 75% 3D platformer collectathon and 25% everything else I was expecting.
At the start of the missions you HAVE to collect coins for credits to purchase buildings that are scattered everywhere across the map AND you MUST find batteries or your just sunk on the harder waves. This will often take you the full time they give you to prepare for the wave, 5 minutes. So every wave your forced to search for credits by platforming all over the place for 5 mins, looking for either tokens or credit packets, and batteries if there's no battery charger on a map to charge your old ones. There's also just not a lot of building to do, mainly cause credit limitations, you can only have 3 buildings in your loadout and there being not many places to build, I know harder difficulties add more spaces though so thats cool.
The combat itself is ok, different enemy types that are cool, some of them could use something that makes them more distinct from another. The gun system really confused me at first, you just have one universal gun that has different heads you put on to change the weapon, and EVERY attachment is compatible which I didn't find out till just a couple hours ago, thought I couldn't use a shotgun attachment since I didn't have one. Feel like having a universal gun is another thing that's cool on paper but really eh in practice, especially when you have a cool premise like this. Could have had some REALLY cool gun ideas like a foam dart minigun, bow that shoots lawn darts or Lego Launcher some crazy stuff like that. The game also gives you zero information on the enemy which i feel is pretty standard on most TD games, also show no place where they spawn or what path they take just gotta make your best guess where your gonna defend from. There is a radar, but its an attachment for your gun and you have to, you guessed it, scour the map for it lol. There are shops you can purchase things but they are random and credits always feel so tight I almost never bother with it UNLESS its the radar cause it just makes the game way more enjoyable when your not constantly getting flanked by surprise when your trying to defend 3 cores.
On the bright side the concept, art direction and all that stuff is THERE, I just feel the gameplay isn't there for me.
The devs are nice and willing to listen though so that's good. I am glad that most people seem to enjoy it though, maybe just not for me. There is something special here I just don't think its been fully tapped into.